Marcus and Varn cut right
to the point with their view about Mayor Kriseman's comments and proposals as "weak"
and "not plausible.

Kriseman's public approach
was a hastily arranged short march to allow for some expression of public
concern and outrage. The march got some media time, produced a couple of sound
bites but really accomplished very little given the Mayor's lackluster
comments.

It is probably not fair to
politicize these events, but Republicans have one view of this problem and Democrats
have another and Kriseman being a good Democrat is singing the company line.
Let's blame all of these issues on guns.

I agree we have a gun
problem in the United States and quite likely in St. Petersburg. However, guns
are the mechanism not the cause. If all ten of these homicides or even half of
them had been caused by people being beaten to death with baseball bats would everyone
be calling for stricter control on base ball bats?

The last time I checked
illegal trafficking in guns was a crime and perhaps the St. Pete PD should be
backtracking a little harder on where these guns are coming from a making some prosecutable
cases on those providing the firearms. It is way past time to start taking some
illegal gun dealers off the street along with the drug dealers.

It is easy to stand in a
crowd like Friday's march and decry firearms as the reason for these recent incidents,
but it could just as easily be a knife or a tire iron.

After promising the African
American community just about everything you could think of to get their vote, the Kriseman administration has really done very
little to address the root cause of poverty and the conditions that lead to the
level of frustration and anger that foment incidents like we have seen in the last
few weeks.

A couple of hours of the
Mayor's time marching down a street will not solve these issues.

Kriseman and his dream team
need to stop playing to the millennials, the downtown rich, the Chamber of Commerce
and focus on helping those in St. Pete who need it most.